According to RFE/RL, the application for the holding of the meeting was filed on 6 April. It was to have taken place in the square opposite the city recreation house. However, last Monday the applicant, human rights activist Zmitser Salawiow received the official refusal to authorize the measure.

Salawiow: “We filed the application for holding of the meeting on 22 April. We invited the leaders of the electoral coalition “5+” to it, but Navapolatsk CEC refused to authorize the meeting for invented reasons. The answer of the executive committee is a display of bureaucratic nonsense.”

To confirm these words we can draw a quotation from the mentioned letter. The measure was prohibited because “The organizer or the person, responsible for the organization of the measure didn’t attach to the application the written undertaking to hold the measure”.

According to Mr. Salawiow, it is open mockery at the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus that guarantees to citizens liberty of meetings and assemblies.